The current Lean Churches team has the following volunteer members:
Johnny Ervin – Overall Team Leader – Johnny’s desire since retirement from a Fortune 500 company 5 years ago has been to encourage and support church planters. He has served on the staffs of two church plants during that time, LifeBridge Church in Madison, MS and Crosspoint Church in Gulfport, MS. Both of these churches are stable, with one now moved into their new digs and one engaged in building its first permanent meeting facility. Johnny has significant leadership experience in the business world and is a certified assistant coach with Ministry Coaching International.
Greg Miller – Editor-in-Chief – Greg has been involved in two church plants–one as a member and one as a planter. Over the past two decades he has been on the leadership team at several other churches (both small and large). During that time he has also worked as a writer and editor for several publishing companies.
Philip Thurman – Social Media Lead – Philip is the lead and one of the founding pastors of LifeBridge Church. He is an active blogger, a MK, a soccer coach, a goalie and is passionate about church plants. He has an amazing ability to build relationships with unchurched men through a variety of settings and then encourage them to seriously consider a relationship with Jesus.
Jeff Simmons – Overall Strategy Lead – Jeff is a bi-vocational church planter that helped found Crosspoint Church. He is a chemical engineer, leads the small group ministry at Crosspoint and has survived Hurricane Katrina with his family, even though their house did not.
Matt Ervin – Technical Lead and church consultant – Matt has a variety of interests including riding his motor cycle, culinary arts, conservative political commentary and providing web sites and graphic services to churches and small businesses. He can write computer code as well as develop successful strategies for applying it.
Mark Ervin – Media Strategy Lead and Word Press consultant – Mark has almost 10 years of advertising agency experience as a writer and creative director. He has developed his Wordpress skills through his advertising blog mewrite.com.